If you’re going to make a project featuring huge battle scenes, you’ve got to do it right. From Game of Thrones’ infamous Season 6 episode “Battle of the Bastards” to the entirety of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, when a brutal and bloody battlefield scene is done well, it transports the audience to the middle of the action, with all the anxiety felt right alongside the soldiers. This is certainly the case in Edward Berger’s Netflix feature, All Quiet on the Western Front, an anti-war film that finds its characters trudging through the horrific fronts of WWI. In a behind-the-scenes look, courtesy of the streamer’s Twitter account, viewers can watch one of those intense sequences take place in real time with the finished product rolling above.
In the clip, which is from the action packed and tone setting opening scene, we see a soldier making his way towards the enemy. With cameras following his every move, the audience is taken along on his quest to make it out alive. Shown in a split format, the completed scene runs above while we see the behind-the-scenes action unfold below with cameras sticking closely to the actor. In a complete contrast, explosions, gun shots, and smoke fill the air with actors running and scrambling in full costume as the camera operators stand in the middle of it all wearing puffy jackets. Towards the end of the shot, the soldier begins to run directly into the action with the cameras and boom mic operators in hot pursuit before the close-up look comes to an end.
Based on the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front is the third time the book has been adapted into a film, but the first time by a German filmmaker. During the darkest days of the first world war, the story introduces audiences to a young group of recent German army recruits led by Felix Kammerer’s Paul Bäumer. With all the war propaganda being pushed their way, the young men (many of whom have yet to reach their 18th birthdays), eagerly sign up to join what they see to be an easily won war. As the harsh realities of gloomy, muddy, and blood soaked battlefields become an everyday occurrence for the young men, they discover that they’ve been lied to by their government and are now going to be lucky to make it home alive.
Along with Kammerer the feature also stars Daniel Brühl (The Falcon and The Winter Soldier), Albrecht Schuch, Moritz Klaus, Moritz Klaus, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanović, Sebastian Hülk, David Striesow, Adrian Grünewald, Luc Feit, Tobias Langhoff, Andreas Döhler, Alexander Schuster, Michael Stange, Michael Wittenborn, André Marcon, and Anton von Lucke.
Check out the behind-the-scenes clip below and keep scrolling for a trailer for All Quiet on the Western Front, now streaming on Netflix.
